'Trouble With the Truth' takes it all personally

'The Trouble With the Truth'

John Shea and Lea Thompson in "The Trouble With the Truth."

John Shea and Lea Thompson in "The Trouble With the Truth."

Gary Goldstein, Special to Tribune Newspapers

It's a testament to writer-director Jim Hemphill's enjoyably chatty script and to the hand-in-glove performances of his charismatic leads that "The Trouble With the Truth," a movie that's largely just one long, real-time conversation between two people, proves such an alive and involving film.

Despite taking place in only a few indoor locations — and without an excess of movement within those spots — Hemphill deftly manages to avoid the kind of static staginess often associated with this sort of chamber piece. Instead, he plunks us swiftly and intimately into the lives of a long-divorced couple, womanizing lounge musician Robert (John Shea) and remarried novelist Emily (Lea Thompson), as they meet for drinks, dinner and dissection upon Emily's arrival in LA for a business trip.

And quite the catch-up it is as the two, who share a just-engaged daughter (Danielle Harris, seen briefly in the opening), move through a probing series of verbal volleys that recount the history of their 14-year marriage from youthful idealism to disillusionment and infidelity.

Thanks to the residual love and attraction between the pair, this cocktail-fueled reunion never descends into a "Virginia Woolf"-like grudge match but, rather, remains an equitable, tender, sometimes surprising game of hard truth-telling.